Get Your Own Copy of REVOLTING!

Thank you very much to Sandra Feen for this photo of my poetry chapbook "Revolting" (published by Cul-de-sac of Blood in November 2024). You can acquire your own copy of this chapbook from Cul-de-sac of Blood HERE - https://www.culdesacofblood.com/books

Or directly from me/my Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/1851916682/new-revolting-by-juliet-cook-2024-poetry

Read a few more poems from my NEW poetry chapbook, REVOLTING!

Here is a link to a new Cul-de-sac of Blood Instagram post, in which you can Preview some of the poems within my new poetry chapbook, REVOLTING!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDo9IIAxQGB/?img_index=1

REVOLTING is available from Cul-de-sac of Blood HERE - https://www.culdesacofblood.com/books
Or if you'd like to acquire a copy directly from me, feel free to ask...

Read the first poem in my NEW Poetry Chapbook, REVOLTING (and more)!

"Sometimes we learn the hard way

 that some mice will eat their own babies

like sadistic cannibals, leaving nothing but half a body
attached to a head that will always live inside mine."

in the first poem ("From Hormone Imbalance to Death") within my NEW chapbook, "REVOLTING" (very recently published by Cul-de-sac of Blood).

I'm sharing a few more photos of this chapbook, as well as this whole poem here.

Front cover - first page of poem - second page of poem - back cover.

You can acquire the whole chapbook (in conjunction with other chapbooks or by itself) from Cul-de-sac of Blood HERE - https://www.culdesacofblood.com/books

Or you can acquire it by itself directly from me.

(You can also see more photos and more details in this previous blog post HERE - https://doppelgangrene.blogspot.com/2024/11/my-new-poetry-chapbook-revolting-is-now.html)

HELLO! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? DO YOU HEAR ME?

I know how my own brain works and how it feels. Sometimes I feel like certain people seem to think or act as if I'm less intelligent than I used to be or less intelligent than I actually am. I'm certainly not a genius, but I'm certainly not unintelligent. I have some word issues. I am not great at quickly and easily explaining some things. In some ways I'm different than I used to be, but doesn't that apply to most of us in different ways? I have some memory issues. I'm a rather slow reader and need to concentrate harder than I used to in order to initially process something and then not too long after that, I might forget certain things again. But just because my reading is slower and my processing takes longer and I have more memory issues than I used to, that doesn't mean that I don't understand things when I concentrate on reading them.

It also doesn't mean that I need someone else to repeatedly explain things to me as though I don't understand or to repeatedly talk over me or to tell me what to do as though I'll make the wrong choice if they don't or to indicate that I'm less than I used to be. Just because things take me longer and require more substantial effort and repeated concentration, that doesn't mean my brain is a broken down mess.

It means my brain is different.

My brain is still my own. Not worse. Not less than. Different.

In addition to the above (or perhaps somewhat interconnected with the above), I am feeling rather sad (and like I'm not getting enough accomplished in a timely manner, whatever that even means). I guess that's just the kind of day (month? year?) it is.

Somewhat related to my own slow process, on the plus side, one really positive thing about slow reading/processing is that I'm used to that and enjoy it (sometimes) because of poetry. Poetry has always been a preferred form of reading and writing for me and poetry is a form of writing that I have often chosen to read (and re-read) slowly in order to process (and interpret and interpret again in different ways) because that's how poetry works for me.  

Along those lines, I will say one thing that is causing me to feel a bit sad is this meme I've seen quite a few of my poetry friends sharing on social media that shows a burning world on fire and then underneath that image of a burning world, a silly comedic "poet" asking, "Do you need any poems?"

Quite a few people are commenting that they don't know whether to laugh or cry and I feel that way too, but it mostly makes me feel upset and like crying and like maybe nothing is very important; not even the things we really like and are strongly drawn to.

I think a lot of us poetry/art people already know that poetry is not hugely important to the mainstream. But regardless of that, I still think it is a very worthwhile and meaningful form of expression and connection and sharing. Even if it's relatively little on a larger scale, I don't think that makes it meaningless or silly. I think it is meaningful and important to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons.

It is still Halloween/ Me on Halloween night 2024!

A photo of me on Halloween 2024. It's hard to believe that October is about to end.

If I suddenly died, my poetry files wouldn't make sense to anyone else...

Most of my poems seem to range from one third of a page to one half of a page to almost a whole page to a little bit longer than a page to a page and a half (with occasional exceptions that are shorter or longer). But the poem I'd been working on for a while and recently finished (at least for now) is almost three whole pages long (and at least somewhat different from my norm in other ways too). I'm not usually drawn to long poems, because I'm a slow reader, and so if I see a poem that's more than a page long, I'm less likely to dive into reading it if my time feels limited. But this poem of mine is a weirdo and is doing what it wants to do.

Somewhere in the process of working on this poem, I also started thinking about how my process has changed over the years. For many years, I wrote everything on paper until a poem seemed almost done; then I would switch to the computer to see how the formatting looked when I typed the words from hand writing to the screen. I'd make a few more revisions on the computer and then print out the completed poem. If I changed my mind later and made more revisions and then printed out the revised version, I'd still keep the previous version(s) on my computer and on paper with the previous version(s) stapled to the revised version(s).

In more recent years, I don't care so much about saving all the drafts of a poem in progress. I'm not saying I delete things fast, but if a poem in progress ends up turning into a very different poem, I don't usually have a problem deleting the earlier version and just starting over with the new version and so on and so forth. I do still print out a copy of every completed poem though, so they're not just on my computer. But the printed out versions are oddly organized, as are the online versions. I mean, I know how and where I have them organized, but if I suddenly died, my files wouldn't make sense to anyone else.

I'm not a very organized person in terms of how things are stored in my home OR on my computer. As far as my computer files go, I store and organize works-in-progress in various phases, but there's so many works-in-progress that I save while they're in progress and then forget to delete all those in progress documents. I do have a somewhat organized separate file for my completed poems though, entitled "Juliet POEMS".

I'm someone who has been writing poetry for over 30 years now, so if I saved all my drafts and in progress poems, my space would be inundated with works-in-progress, as well as documents from the past that I just never deleted or got rid of. It already is to a certain extent. I guess I'm in the middle with that sort of stuff and maybe I always will be. I most certainly don't desire to forget or ignore or delete the past (especially in terms of my poetry), but I most certainly do prefer to focus on the present.

On a semi-related note, another part of the reason I still have a lot of files, documents, and pieces of writing (most certainly not just poems) from the past is because I don't feel like focusing on a bunch of past documentation (such as old hand-written letters, old photos, old files, etc...) in order to decide what I should or shouldn't get rid of, because then my mind would focus on the past to make those sort of decisions.

Happy October 2024!

Happy October! I hope it is brimming with creative delights, poetry, art, reading, writing, submitting poetry, genuine communication, creative flow, and positive dynamics. And also delightful spookiness, disturbing horror movies, and fun socks. And also time not speeding buy so darn fast.

Happy October from Leyland!

Happy October from me and my socks!

NEW! I am peculiarly thrilled to have a creepy collaborative clown poem appearing in Horror Sleaze Trash!

"The oldest of the clowns forms the apex of a rotting and sadistic pyramid in which hellbent volcanic ash pours out of the mother clowns mouths like a gravy vat of drying blood."

in Alex S. Johnson and I's creepy collaborative clown poem, "Greasepaint Inferno", which is now making an appearance within Horror Sleaze Trash HERE - https://horrorsleazetrash.com/2024/06/29/juliet-cook-and-alex-s-johnson/

NEW! I am delighted to have four collaborative poems appearing in the latest issue of Misfit!

Delighted to have four collaborative poems appearing in the new Issue No. 38, Spring 2024 of Misfit!

Two poems by Daniel G. Snethen and me - and two poems by j/j hastain and me.

You can read them and many more poems HERE - http://misfitmagazine.net/archive/No-38/Cook.html ***
Another implosion of stagnation
leads toward further deterioration.
Metallic trash inside your head
replicates itself and now there are two
of You hiding behind the trash.

But the first You has succumbed
to ferric oxidation of the psyche
and the second You is bent
against following suit and yearns
to become one with a garbage can.

Your mom is a hysterical burn barrel
with complications during delivery.
Her voice either sizzles at You
or takes You out.
in the poem "Retrogradation of You" by Juliet Cook and Daniel Snethen

NEW! My poem "Sleep Deprivation Becomes You" is having trouble sleeping in Buffalo 8!

I'm sharing this kind of late at night, because it's just been one of those off-kilter sort of days, BUT I am very excited to have a poem appearing in the new volume 3 of buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

This poem, "Sleep Deprivation Becomes You" actually seems like a good poetic partial description of my mental/emotional state lately. Sigh.

But I am pleased to have it making an appearance inside buffalo 8!

Read it HERE - https://buffalojournal.tumblr.com/post/749736210759647232/sleep-deprivation-becomes-you

NEW! My poem "Snow Angel Position With Dread" is making an appearance in Pinky Thinker Press!

"The cow was an unborn fetus.
The snow was a giant womb.
I needed to lie down
in snow angel position
and mimic the dreadful truth.
Give birth to something nobody wanted."

The end of my poem "Snow Angel Position With Dread", which appears in Issue 11 of Pinky Thinker Press.

Read the whole poem on page 27 here - https://www.mignolo.art/ptp

Read and check out other poems, fiction, and art too.

NEW! My Non-relaxed "Relax" poem is appearing in the March Issue of Ghost City Review!

Delighted that my non-relaxed "Relax" poem is appearing in the new March Issue of Ghost City Review!

"They will suddenly stab me,
then tell me I'm the one
who is filled with animosity
just because I didn't stay silent."

Here's a link to my poem - https://ghostcitypress.com/poetry0324/2024/3/17/juliet-cook

And here's a link to the whole issue - https://ghostcitypress.com/march-2024-1

My newest poetry chapbook, "Your Mouth Is Moving Backwards" is now available in the Blood Pudding Press shop too!

"Your Mouth Is Moving Backwards" (my newest poetry chapbook, published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press in December 2023) has now been added to my Blood Pudding Press shop too, in case anyone would like to purchase one in conjunction with another chapbook there... 

Here is a link to that listing - https://www.etsy.com/listing/1653667391/new-your-mouth-is-moving-backwards-a-new

Of course it can also still be purchased directly from Ethel Zine & Micro Press too, here - https://www.ethelzine.com/your-mouth-is-moving-backwards

***

"Damned ecosystem inside
a malformed crayfish crawling out of
this doll's mouth.

The doll's insecticidal eyes.
The doll's hysterical orifices.
The doll's tiny doom portal opening."

in one of the "FLESH WORLD" poems inside this collection